Signs are posted outside of the Library of Congress in Washington on Sunday notifying visitors that all Library of Congress buildings will be closed to the public during the government shutdown. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call)

A government shutdown always unleashes a cascade of political histrionics, and chief among those is lawmakers “refusing” their salaries.

Scores of senators and House members sent out news releases over the weekend defiantly proclaiming what they would do with their salaries while the government remains shuttered.

An engraving of President James A. Garfield’s assassination. Not since Garfield has a sitting House member so much as won an electoral vote in a presidential election. (Engraving from Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper)

No sitting House member has won an electoral vote for president since 1880, when Ohio’s James A. Garfield captured the White House — and he didn’t even mean to run for the job.

In fact, the Ohio legislature had just voted to appoint Garfield to a Senate term — for which he would have been seated in March 1881 — when the GOP met in Chicago to pick its nominee for the presidency in the summer of 1880.

President Donald Trump’s first travel ban executive order is now the subject of a social media study. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call file photo)

When President Donald Trump first announced his temporary travel ban on immigrants from several Muslim-majority countries, one group started looking into how Americans were reacting to the news on social media.

Stratos Jets, a private jet charter service, has looked at more than 120,000 tweets related to the ban. It found that two days after the first executive order, more than 35 percent of those tweets contained the hashtag #NoBan.

Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger said it was inappropriate for a member of Congress to “visit a dictator.” (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call File Photo)

PHILADELPHIA — Hawaii Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard’s secret trip to Syria this month continues to attract criticism from fellow members of Congress, as well as a washing of the hands from her own caucus leader.

Illinois GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger, who, like Gabbard, is a veteran of the Iraq War, slammed his colleague for meeting with President Bashar Assad and called on House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Speaker Paul D. Ryan to condemn the trip.

A spokeswoman for Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, shown here at a rally held by labor, environmental, and consumer groups in November, confirmed the congresswoman’s trip to Syria on Wednesday. (Tom Wiliiams/CQ Roll Call file photo)

Hawaii Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard was reported to be returning on Wednesday from a secret trip to Syria, which her aides described as a “fact-finding” mission to end the conflict there.

Gabbard spokeswoman Emily Latimer said the representative “felt it was important to meet with a number of individuals and groups including religious leaders, humanitarian workers, refugees and government and community leaders,” Foreign Policy reported.

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard discussed Syria, the Islamic State and al-Qaida during a meeting with President-elect Donald Trump on Monday, the Hawaii Democrat said in a statement that did not specify whether she’s being considered for a post in the incoming administration.

The sophomore congresswoman, an Iraq War veteran, is the first Democratic lawmaker to visit the president-elect at Trump Tower in New York, where he’s been holding meetings with potential Cabinet and administrative appointees, as well as with people who have ideas he wants to hear.